Final Bell Tolls For South Works Plant

Judge Oks U.s. Steel Demolition

August 13, 1985|By Robert Kearns.

United States Steel Corp., after more than a year of litigation, gained the right Monday to demolish more than half of its South Works plant, ending any hope of reviving its huge steelmaking facility on Chicago`s Far South Side.

Appearing before Cook County Circuit Judge James Murray, Assistant Illinois Atty. Gen. Michael Hayes asked Murray to lift a ban on demolishing certain steelmaking facilities there because an ``economically feasible`` way of operating the South Works as a fully integrated steelmaker could not be found.

In granting the request, Murray lamented that 10 or 20 years ago the Far South Side and Gary areas were expected to grow into a world-class industrial center rivaling or surpassing those in Japan.

With area unemployment continuing to mount and the wrecking ball poised at the South Works after having swung at Wisconsin Steel Corp., those expectations went unfulfilled.

U.S. Steel attorney Richard Antonelli said he regarded Murray`s decision as positive. ``We`re where we want to be,`` Antonelli said after the hearing. Hayes said city and state officials are working with U.S. Steel to come up with a plan to develop the South Works site.

Until Murray`s decision, there had been hope that Mayor Harold Washington`s Steel Task Force, headed by real estate developer Philip Klutznick, might devise a way to revive the South Works.

On July 30, 1984, Murray issued an injunction at the request of Illinois Atty. Gen. Neil Hartigan, the United Steel Workers of America and a committee of unemployed steelworkers who were seeking to keep most of the South Works operating.

Since then, U.S. Steel has contended that it wanted to develop an industrial park there, using about 70 percent of the 570-acre site not in operation. ``We`re going to develop that property one way or another,``

Antonelli said.

U.S. Steel Chairman David Roderick has consistently said the company plans to keep in operation its small steelmaking facility, which makes structural beams mainly for the construction industry and employs about 900 workers. South Works once employed as many as 10,000 people.

Thomas Ferrall, a spokesman for U.S. Steel, said that the company had permits to begin dismantling buildings and that wrecking crews were on the site.

But Ferrall would not say when demolition would begin and denied reports that U.S. Steel may have begun clearing the land for an industrial park.

Most steelworkers had given up hope anyway.

``I think the people that were working there just gave up a long time ago,`` said Alice Peurala, president of United Steel Workers Local 65, which represents South Works employees. ``It`s a crying shame. It`s a disaster that U.S. Steel has the right to do it. The federal government should be called in to help.``

Peurala said the task force`s preliminary plan to revive the South Works had sounded like ``an impossible dream.`` The plan, which was never made public, would have involved selling the part of South Works in operation to a worker-owned corporation and using it as a cornerstone for expanding operations.

Hayes said that U.S. Steel`s refusal to sell the operating beam mill made the plan unviable. But Ferrall said the plan wouldn`t have worked even if the beam mill had been sold to an employee group.

Murray`s 1984 order had prohibited the steelmaker from dismantling the No. 8 blast furnace, the 96-inch plate mill, the 44-inch slab mill and 16 other structures at the facility.